K International provides a professional Finnish Translation Service. Using in-country teams of Finnish translators, all professionally qualified, we are able to translate your material quickly and cost effectively into Finnish.

All translations will be proofread by an independent translator and can also be formatted to your own specification. Each project will be assigned a dedicated project manager to keep you fully informed and updated along the life of the assignment.

Using K International for your Finnish translation will provide your company with the cultural knowledge and experience to make your next Finnish translation project a success.

>> Get a Quote for Finnish Translation <<

K International can provide a complete Finnish localisation service for your,

• Finnish Website translation
• Finnish Leaflets or Brochures
• Finnish Simultaneous Translation
• Finnish Medical, Legal or Technical Documents, and,
• any other Finnish translation project

Make contact with K International today to talk through your next Finnish Translation project.

The Finnish Language

Finland is the smallest of the four Nordic countries (the others being Sweden, Denmark and Norway.) As far as languages go, it’s also the odd one out. The other Nordic countries speak West Germanic languages, descended from the Old Norse spoken by the Vikings. Not only is Finnish not West Germanic, it’s not even an Indo-European language!

Finnish is one of the most important languages in the Finno-Ugric language family, one of the language families that existed in Europe before the Indo-Europeans arrived. Finnish is more closely related to Estonian and Hungarian than it is to the other Nordic languages.

Finnish Today

Today, Finnish is spoken by approximately 6 million people in Northern Europe. Finnish speakers live primarily in Finland itself but also in areas currently claimed by other countries, such as the Karelian region of Russia. In Finland, the language has experienced something of an official revival in recent years.

For centuries, starting in the Middle Ages, Finland was ruled as a dominion of Sweden. Making Swedish the language of government, administration and most business. One haunting quote from a Finnish bishop, recorded in a German travel journal circa 1450, sums up the situation for Finnish speakers at the time: “I willingly want to speak Finnish, but I cannot.”

Under these conditions, it’s amazing that the Finnish language has survived and maintained its status as a majority language in Finland. All too often, when one group of people rules over another group that speaks a different language, the language of the ruling class prevails and usage of the other language declines.

This can happen even when the ruling class does not consciously try to stamp out the other language, as parents see that teaching their children to speak their native tongue will limit their opportunity for advancement. However, even when Finland was ruled by other countries, Finns continued to speak Finnish in the home and teach it to their children.

Unlike Irish and Welsh, it never came close to extinction. Finland was also governed by Russia for a little over a century, from 1809 to 1917. However, for most of that time period, Finland retained a good deal of autonomy and self-government, so the Russian language never gained a significant foothold there like Swedish did.

When Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917, Finnish became one of the country’s two official languages, along with Swedish. Since then, Swedish speakers have declined in Finland, to approximately 5% of the population.

Finnish is now on equal legal footing with Swedish, although some Finns would like to see Finnish become the sole national language. Also, Finnish has gained recognition as an official minority language of the European Union, and is recognized by the Nordic Language Convention. This means that Finnish people travelling to other Nordic countries have the right to conduct government business in their own tongue, without being required to pay for the cost of translation.

Difficult to Learn

Among speakers of other European languages, Finnish has a reputation for being obscure and hard to learn.

What makes Finnish so different from other European languages?

Well, for one thing, the vocabulary is different. Languages in the Indo-European family have all have a common source, the ancient Indo-European language. For all of their differences, there are many words called cognates that sound similar, and these similarities provide some familiar points of reference that make it easier for speakers of one language to learn another.

In Finnish, there are fewer cognates, in spite of the fact that the Finns have borrowed extensively from other languages such as Swedish and to a lesser extent Russian. The uniqueness of Finnish grammar and Finnish pronunciation also mean that when Finnish does borrow words from other languages, the Finnish versions end up sounding completely different.

Another unique characteristic of the Finnish language that can make it intimidating to non-Finnish speakers is the extent to which Finnish relies on suffixes to change the meanings of root words.

English uses prepositions to express the relationship of one noun in a sentence to another. For example, in the sentence “Jack is in the box” the word in is the preposition. Instead of using a preposition like “in” to modify a noun, in Finnish you would change the noun by adding a suffix. The reliance on suffixes means that Finnish words are often much longer than English words.

History of the Finnish Language

The land we know today as Finland was first settled during the Stone Age, around 8,500 BC, as the country began to thaw out somewhat from the Ice Age. The original settlers probably came from what is now Estonia and Russia.

These settlers may have brought with them the Finno-Ugric language that would eventually evolve into modern-day Finnish. The first references we have to Finland as the homeland of the Finnish people are two Swedish runestones, with inscriptions that date to the 11th century.

Finnish culture was shaped by its contacts with other European cultures, but at the same time the Finnish people remained separate until Sweden invaded in the middle of the 13th century as part of the second Swedish crusade.

Sweden ruled Finland for the next 550 years. During that time, Swedish became the language of government, business and education, but Finnish remained widely spoken in the home and among the peasantry.

Around 1550, a written form of the language was developed by Michael Agricola, a Finnish clergyman. Agricola translated the catechism, various prayers, and the New Testament into Finnish. In the 19th century, when Finland was a semi-autonomous grand duchy ruled by Russia, the Finnish language began to come into its own again. By the end of the century, Finnish was being used in newspapers, journals and books. For example, the first Finnish novel, Seven Brothers, was published during this time period in 1870.

In 1835, Elias Lönnrot published the Kalevala, a compilation of Finnish and Karelian poems that were traditionally sung and passed down orally. The Kalevala preserves ancient Finnish mythology, describing the superhuman deeds of Finnish heroes. At the time it was published, it helped advance the cause of Finnish nationalism by giving the Finnish people a literary work of their own to embrace and be proud of. Today, it is considered the national epic of Finland and has influenced many modern works of literature, including JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Starting in the late 19th century, tensions rose between Finnish speakers and the Swedish-speaking minority. This sometimes contentious public debate, known as the language strife, continued until Finland became independent in 1917. The language strife was for the most part calmed by the decision to have 2 official languages, Swedish and Finnish.

In 1956, Finland joined the Nordic Council, along with Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland. Thus, when the Nordic Language Convention was approved in 1987, Finnish was included as one of the languages. The Nordic Language Convention guarantees citizens of Nordic countries the opportunity to receive translation and interpreter services in their native language under certain circumstances if they are in another Nordic country. The Nordic Language Convention covers situations such as dealing with the police, hospital visits, employment offices and social security departments.

Finland has several distinct dialects, but they are all mutually intelligible and everyone is able to speak the standardized version of the language as well. In addition to the dialects, there are some differences between written Finnish and spoken Finnish. The written language often uses a more complex and archaic syntax. However, everyone in Finland is literate and understands both forms. Also, in formal speaking situations such as political speeches, it is not uncommon to hear people use the written form of the language orally.

Fun Facts

British linguist and author JRR Tolkien used Finnish as an inspiration for Quenya, one of the languages spoken by the elves in the Lord of the Rings series. For example, both Finnish and Quenya have a lot of vowels and few consonant clusters. They are also both inflected languages, where one word can be modified by the addition of suffixes to express many different ideas. In addition, Tolkien took some words directly from Finnish, such as rauta, which means metal or iron.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translation Services | Medical Translation | Technical Translation | Legal Translation